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After Joffrey Lupul was simultaneously hit from both sides by Philadelphia players Jay Rosehill and Adam Hall on Thursday night, the Maple Leafs forward needed some assistance as he wobbled his way back to the bench.

If it was impossible to say what had just occurred inside Lupul’s body and brain on the third shift of just his 10th game of this NHL season, it was far easier to diagnose the presumed condition of Toronto’s hockey fans at the same moment.

As their most important player retreated to the dressing room for treatment, his evening finished and the Leafs en route to a 5-3 loss, you didn’t need to be a doctor to know that high-strung members of Leafs Nation had suffered a shudder down a collective spine while a promising season flashed hauntingly before long-suffering eyes.

Whether Lupul’s injury is significant or not is a matter for another day. He wasn’t available for comment after the game. And while Leafs coach Randy Carlyle reported that Lupul felt “fine,” pronouncing him “50-50” to participate in Friday’s practice, it was difficult to know what to make of the coach’s assessments. Though no one in Leafland uttered the word “concussion,” Lupul has previously suffered at least a couple significant head injuries during his NHL career. Teammate John-Michael Liles, who missed time last season with a concussion, acknowledged the obvious concern.

“It’s definitely scary, just because it’s such an unpredictable thing,” Liles said. “But you hope for the best.”

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Lupul’s well-being, of course, is inextricably linked to that of his team. The Maple Leafs had been clearly enlivened in the previous six games in which he had been in the lineup since he returned from a 25-game absence with a fractured forearm. They hadn’t lost a game in regulation during the run, going 4-0-2 with Lupul on board. Though he’d also served a two-game suspension, until Thursday night Lupul had scored in every game since his return from his broken arm, racking up eight goals and five assists in those six games. The club had been singing the praises of his contagious presence.

“When you’ve got players like Lupul who play at that level, everybody jumps on board,” Claude Loiselle, the Leafs assistant general manager, was saying the other day. “Those are the types of players that bring out the best in other players.”

The worst thing about Lupul, of course, is that injury-plagued seasons are nothing new in his life. There’s been a spinal cord contusion (out a month in 2008) and a high ankle sprain (out another month that same season). There’ve been a couple of surgeries on a herniated disc that led to complications including a blood infection that kept him out of the NHL for most of 12 months a few years back.

Around that time, Carlyle — then Lupul’s coach with the Anaheim Ducks — said that Lupul, down 40 pounds from his playing weight and unable to stand straight, had the appearance of an 80-year-old man. His teammates called him Mr. Burns, referencing the feeble-looking character on the TV show The Simpsons.

Lupul wasn’t even able to shake his reputation for frailty last year, when he saw a remarkable comeback cut short by a separated shoulder that left him out of the Toronto lineup for the final 16 games of Toronto’s dramatic collapse. In the six most recent NHL seasons, he has missed nearly two full seasons to injury — 159 games, to be precise.

He’s also had two previous concussions that have been reported, one in 2005 and another in 2008, the latter suffered while he was a member of the Flyers playing against the Leafs at the Air Canada Centre. In that instance, he was accidentally hit by Philadelphia teammate Derian Hatcher. There’s bad luck involved in building a track record of brittleness, to be sure.

“Hopefully it’s minor,” Liles said on Thursday night, speaking of Lupul’s latest run-in with peril. “It’s one of those goofy things. When I got hit (last season), I played the rest of the game, didn’t really feel anything. And then the next morning it was like my world was just turned upside down. Hopefully that’s not the case (for Lupul).”

To say Lupul’s early exit was the difference in Thursday’s game would probably be inaccurate. As Carlyle said after he was asked if No. 19’s absence took the wind out of his team’s sails: “I didn’t think we had any wind to start with.”

The Leafs were flat before Lupul was flattened, to be sure.

But understand that fingers are crossed that when he awakens on Friday morning both his world, and his team’s, will be right side up.

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